Thus we get an aggregate of 218,000 officers and men for service ashore and afloat. This total includes cadets and boys under training, and approximately 200,000, it may be assumed, were available for service in the Home Fleets and the squadrons in distant seas. It is an axiom that in peace we have more ships than we can man, while in war we shall have a good surplus of men after manning all the ships. When passing from a peace to a war footing, Royal Fleet reservists--well-trained men with from five to seven years’ service--and others became available and the Fleet was fully mobilised, having no inconsiderable surplus to make good the casualties of battle. CHAPTER VI THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE GERMAN FLEET There is a certain parallel between the circumstances which have brought the commanders-in-chief of the British and German battle fleets into the positions they respectively hold to-day. Just as Admiral Sir John Jellicoe was long since “ear-marked” for the supreme command of the Home Fleets, so was Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl selected for the control of the German High Seas Fleet years before his appointment was actually gazetted. The German commander-in-chief, whose flag now flies in the Dreadnought, Friedrich der Grosse, is without doubt one of Europe’s most distinguished naval officers. In a navy where more than elsewhere, a premium is placed upon scientific leadership, this officer early attracted the attention of his superiors by reason of the skill and resourcefulness he displayed during manœuvres. He is said to have specialised in cruiser tactics, and to have been one of the first officers to urge upon the Navy Department the wisdom of adopting the battle-cruiser design when that novel conception materialised in the British “Invincible.” He is also known as the leading advocate of that system of tactics which is known in Germany as the “rücksichtslose Offensive,” and which in homely idiom may be translated as “going for” the enemy hammer and tongs.